Building Basecamp
Why a guy who wrote a book on refusing to be boxed by labels is currently trapped in a fortress of cardboard and how he's climbing anyway.
I am surrounded by boxes.
Some are still full to the brim. Others are neatly folded away. Their brown cardboard paints every room. There is no escape.
And it’s hilarious. Me, the guy who wrote a whole book about refusing to be boxed in by labels, is now completely surrounded by them.
Each is designed to standardise, stack and store. Job titles and labels are the exact same. They are rigid containers created to make human capital easy to categorise, commoditise and account for.
These boxes are fine for transporting parts of ourselves to a new destination, but they were never meant for us to live out of permanently.
They fill every room around me because I’ve just moved home to Sevenoaks, where I’m taking on the exhausting challenge of setting up a new Basecamp.
Even after living in 10 homes in 2025, this permanent transition to a completely unfurnished place outside the big city hits a little different.
Settling Into a New Home
When making an ascent, you don’t try to summit from sea level. You begin at basecamp, where you adjust to the altitude and pack your bag with the tools for the expedition ahead. You depart knowing that this is your safe place you can return to should the storm of the mountain come too soon.
Home serves the same purpose.
It’s where you crash after a long day, whip up a meal and gather back your strength to take on whatever life brings you next. Curated intentionally, it can be a grounding space that offers you respite from the outside world.
Right now, my basecamp is being built from scratch. It came completely unfurnished, without a fridge, a washing machine or even any curtains.
Kitting it out offers a fascinating, slightly agonising psychological mind game. For the past year, I’ve fiercely protected my business runway so that I can continue to invest in bringing my work to life. But walking into an empty house introduces a delicate dance. To make this space a functional launching pad that actually protects my energy, I have to spend money. Yet every single appliance, delivery fee and piece of furniture feels like a direct hit to my safety net. I find myself pacing around empty rooms, intensely calculating the ROI of a new sofa versus the psychological safety of cash in the bank.
The dichotomy is that while I’m eating dinner at my desk and negotiating on Facebook Marketplace for a table, my business life is accelerating. In the last month, I’ve delivered four talks, two workshops, two podcasts and one LinkedIn Live on Life Design with Sarah Ellis from Squiggly Careers, where over 137 people joined us (watch here!). Part of me desperately wanted to hit pause and say, “Can everyone please freeze their schedules while I locate a kettle?” But momentum doesn’t work like that. It’s a living thing that doesn’t care if I’m taking high-stakes calls from a room with only white walls.
Rediscovering My Energy Toolkit
My advice to anyone navigating this much change would be to lean on your Energy Toolkit. Yet, what I would’ve failed to account for is that our habits take a hit when we move to an entirely new place.
When I stripped away the familiar environmental cues, I landed squarely in the messy middle. My usual rhythm completely shattered the moment I received the keys to this new house. I don’t have my local running routes mapped out in Sevenoaks yet. I haven’t found the quiet coffee shop for a deep focus session. The physical anchors that naturally triggered my daily energy habits are entirely gone, replaced by belongings that are hard to find and not enough storage space to contain them all.
But it’s not just the change. Moving also comes with an invisible, never-ending cognitive load.
An empty house constantly demands your attention. It’s an endless stream of open tabs where you’re measuring windows for curtains, hiring moving vans, chasing broadband engineers and wondering which meals you can cook before your new pans arrive.
It’s a constant low-level hum. Your brain tries to hold space for an important strategy call while simultaneously tracking the toaster on a buggy Royal Mail app that gives you a very unhelpful 9 to 5 arrival window.
In moments like these, your Energy Toolkit cannot be a rigid manual of strict rules. Trying to force your old, structured routines while in a chaotic transition is a recipe for burnout. The toolkit has to become fluid.
The last couple of weeks have been a lesson in how to micro-dose my energy management. It’s meant going for a run that’s as long as I have time for. It’s meant not pressuring myself to make the most of the heatwave when I know there’s so much to do at home. It’s meant allowing those 15 minutes more to travel into the city to deliver a workshop so I can learn how long things take.
It’s been an active, daily process of reminding myself that managing my capacity doesn’t mean having a pristine environment or a rigid calendar. More than ever, it means adapting to the reality in front of me, doing what I can and still showing up for myself even if it’s only in the smallest of ways.
Keep Climbing Anyway
Through all of this, I’ve realised that your home isn’t just a passive backdrop to your life. It is the active engine of your energy. When your basecamp is entirely stripped back, you quickly realise just how much invisible strength you draw from having a stable sanctuary to return to. As much as all the little tasks can often feel like life admin pulling me away from business growth, I’ve come to appreciate that all these micro-decisions are the growth. Every anchor I put into this physical space is a direct dividend back into my capacity.
At the same time, even while navigating a major transition, you still have to deliver on your commitments elsewhere. You don’t get to wait for a pristine, perfectly furnished office to execute with authority. You take the call from a room with an echo. You don’t skip the workout because your old running loop is gone. You explore an unfamiliar street anyway. Real life design is a dynamic dance where you hold space for the messy, exhausting realities of building your foundations from scratch, while simultaneously executing your vision out in the world.
If you’re waiting for the perfect time or for things to settle down before making your next big move, stop waiting. The dust never completely clears. The rooms might be empty and the curtains might not be up yet, but momentum is waiting. Build your basecamp anyway, box by box. Do exactly what you can with the what’s in front of you so you can keep climbing.
Ready to start building your own basecamp?
Grab your copy of my bestselling book, Undefinable Life Design, to unlock the tools, frameworks, and mindset required to design a unique life outside the traditional boxes that sustains both your energy and your income.
I like this chapter and I’ve realised that a lot of “home” comes from rituals practiced at home. Reflecting on what you do that makes you rest and then taking those away with you when you move brings this “fluidity” as you say:)